The Imminent Scholar

The Battle of the Imminent Scholar

Atop my office chair sits a rolling scholar —
whose lips immaculate this, a modest dollar.

For here to spend words divine,
but to waste prose, a crime,
at least when confronted by the Dean of Admissions.

Buried underneath us trodden sods —
of a small university — lay ample reason
to ward off diversity, if but to make merry
with the hopeful and published.

Thus here we sit,
where thought is, to wit,
a chair, an office, a throne:
To oversee the departed, the rejected-outsmarted,
and philosophize a bit o’er their bones.

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Some scholarly humor as we approach the new year and the MLA conference in Seattle. With no untoward intent toward the venerable Mr. Northrop Frye – his caricature c/o an old acquaintance, Van Howell.

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How we think

Light thoughts leopard the deepest dark,
plucked harmoniously awry.
Witnessed together, sense muddles:
“Suspicious pairs – long salad tongs –
straddle a handicapped railing.”

From night sky flies these torn phrases.
We cooperate in story form.
And for a stake, gesticulate,
wrest each thought’s tossed impediments,
grasp at jokes lit by candor, or
manifest choice — window-dressing.

Candor replies with its logic,
and Logic falls fast asleep. Our
constellation of chloroform.
In solemn Night, hairy stars wisp
amidst avuncular mind-drifts,
where such sordid claims silence the
high-rise babble of idle Talk.

Suspicion conduces to stretch
the weary gap, minds the dream sluice —
a torrent of experience
to orchestrate and to abuse.
We thrust upward with filaments,
those tied pinpoints and uncertain
zeniths of unknown origin.
Star-crossed thoughts de-generalized.
Cacophonous genesis forged
aside bemusement: the Idea.

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To all my worldly friends who enjoy glancing, thoughtfully, at the night sky.

Cut-out print of Edinburgh c/o of Emily Hogarth.

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